It's becoming clearer to me now that Jodi has amplified this relationship in her mind even more than I thought before. I thought they did have a long distance thing and then broke up. I am so convinced now, especially after reading her letter and hearing Abe's testimony, that they were never official. It's all coming together now.
Jodi and Travis met, engaged in a flirtation, dated a little, but he seems to have definitively decided she wasn't the one. When she was in Cali she tried hard to get him to commit to her. He liked her but didn't want to take it further. She rationalized in her mind that the only reason he wouldn't committ to her and make her his girl was just to keep crazy Deanna happy. She was in a battle for his attention and devotion and was never worthy. She complained to the Hughes' to make him commit and they played along because they liked her before realizing they'd been had.
The goal was to make him get her to move there. Eventually he tells her it's never gonna happen so she just takes the initiative and moves there anyway, with great resistance from him. The rest of it was her finding ways to insinuate herself into his life, knowing she could always take advantage of his good nature. Can I keep my stuff in your garage? Can I use your car? Can I get some money? Can I get a ride? Oh, is this your bed? Where'd my clothes go? And it always felt like she was so close, so close to winning him. But it just wasn't going to happen.
She convinced herself that they were just on the DL, they were really together but had to keep it underground. But why would Travis do that? When he was with someone, he was with them. He made it known, they were together, he called her his girlfriend. Jodi never got this from him. I never saw any evidence that he held her in the same regard as Deanna or Lisa or Linda or any other girl. She was just another girl he got his rocks off with. And so she had to convince herself in her mind that it's just because she's more special. They were star crossed lovers. Never got the timing right. Travis did love her the most but there were people in his life that we're keeping him from her. So she had to drive a wedge between them. Still didn't work.
Travis should really have put up better boundaries because every time he slept with her it gave her a glimmer of hope. Her obsession with him was deep. All she wrote about, talked about, thought about, wanted was Travis. She had to make this go away because she was finding it impossible to move on. There was a journal entry that I believe encapsulates her need to kill Travis. It basically said there was something that needed to be cut off at its source, shut off like a light. This was Travis. She would only have freedom when he was gone. When Flores was grilling her, just before she changed her story to the ninjas, she's crying and seems close to confessing. "I had to move on."
What's happening now isn't so much hatred of Travis (though that's part of it) as it is a need to convince the world of what the truth of them was, of what she knows she and Travis were. She knew more about him than anyone. Was treated differently than anyone else. Meant more to him than anyone. Make her fantasy a reality in his death. She's done a darn good job too. And Travis isn't here to tell full truth of it and what she put him through.
